


Your New York Winters Are Bleeding Me

by Liz2010



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Mild Language, No Slash, No Smut, Snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 20:25:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17732066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liz2010/pseuds/Liz2010
Summary: Derek jerked awake to the smell of smoke and fire and ash and blood on the salty ocean air.New York in the winter isn't the best place to recover from the horrors that Laura and Derek left behind in California. Both memories and monsters aren't easy to leave behind, but together, they're going to try.





	Your New York Winters Are Bleeding Me

**Author's Note:**

> I have never been to New York in the winter or any other time. My idea of the location is completely based off the internet and the fact that the world is frozen and cold where I am. 
> 
> This is one I have had in my head for a while and I'm pretty satisfied with how it turned out. As always, I own nothing and all mistakes are my own. Thanks for reading!

Derek jerked awake to the smell of smoke and fire and ash and blood on the salty ocean air. He gasped, heart racing, drenched in a cold sweat. He forced himself to breathe, in and out, desperately trying to clear his head and forget the nightmare that mimicked the past too well. 

It was just a dream. He wasn’t in California. He wasn’t watching, wasn’t hearing, wasn’t smelling his family burn to death right in front of him. He wasn’t screaming so hard he thought he would bleed while his sister held him back from the flames, held him back so she wouldn’t be the last Hale standing. 

Laura wasn’t here now, though. He was alone. Alone in an freezing cold old beat up pickup truck somewhere in New York State, a truck that was now home. A truck somewhere parked on a beach, because the ocean still smelled like home, even if they were a thousand miles away. 

They had been living in the truck for weeks now, ever since they turned tail and ran out of Beacon Hills. Ever since Peter had been found suffocated in the hospital room and they knew for sure they weren’t safe. His death was conformation- they knew then for sure the fire wasn’t an accident, no matter what the kind Sheriff said. 

They left behind everything. Their family freshly buried their friends, their home, their inheritance, even the name Hale. They grabbed a couple fake ID’s out of the vault and what little cash was stored there and left town on a Greyhound bus without a backward glance. 

Laura had used all the cash they had to buy a truck in Arizona. It smelled like dirt and cigarettes and the bitterness that was the scent of hopelessness. It quickly the only constant in their lives as they drifted from state to state aimlessly, working odd jobs when they could, stealing when they couldn’t.

They had no pack. It was unthinkable, a ghost story that pups told around campfires to scare the littler ones. It was something his mother had promised would never happen.

“Look at your family” she had said, wrapping Derek up in her strong arms after he came running to her after hearing the story the first time. “Look at your aunts and uncles, brothers, sisters and cousins. You’ll never be alone. You never have to be afraid of that.”

Her eyes had flashed a comforting alpha red, a bright burgundy that warmed Derek from the inside out. She had smelled of lavender, soap, honey and the clean dirt Derek loved to run barefoot through as he chased after his siblings. She smelled like home. They all had.

Laura was the alpha now, alpha of one pathetic beta and a traitor at that. They were a pack so weak it was basically just two omega’s running scared. 

But Laura didn’t see it that way. After they found Peter, Derek confessed it all. The affair with Kate, the way he told her everything without even knowing he was telling her. He expected his sister to cast him out, to tell him she never wanted to see him again, to make him an omega without a home. 

Laura didn’t. With tears in her eyes, she told him it wasn’t his fault. Told him she loved him. Told him he still had a family. He still had her. 

Derek’s confession and Laura’s forgiveness didn’t magically fix everything. They were both still depressed. Derek stopped talking and listlessly watched the miles go by with dead, worn out eyes. Laura cried all the time, even when she didn’t know why. They both had constant nightmares. Both woke each other up screaming. They clung to each other, the only lifelines in an ocean of pain.

Derek signed, traced the triskelion on the ice on the window, and shivered. He ran a dry tongue over his cracked lips and sighed yet again. He was cold, so cold ever since the fire. He thought about turning on the heat, but they were low on gas and he didn’t know if Laura had the money to buy more. He would have to tough it out.

It was getting cold here, whoever it was. Every day, Derek woke up to his own frozen breathe in the air. They would have to head south soon, if they wanted to stay by the ocean.

It was a shame. This was a good town for them; a town where no one asked to many questions. They had been here over a week. It was longer than they usually stayed in one place ever since they had almost settled in a small town in the Midwest. Laura claimed she had caught a hunter’s scent. They had taken off running freshly terrified and hadn’t stopped since. 

It was a dirty little town, poor and desperate, filled with bars, strip clubs, drugs and people who knew how to mind their own business even as two teens that could both pass for underage slept in a truck on a beach in the winter.

Derek had tried to find work here, so they could sleep in bed for once and eat some decent food. Maybe then Laura’s face wouldn’t look so thin, but he had no luck. He looked too young, even though his fake ID said he was eighteen. 

Laura found work thought she wouldn’t say what. It wasn’t enough for a room, not yet, but it was enough for food. Which was nice. They had been eating out of garbage cans and it was awful. Derek could taste the rot on anything they took out of it, but beggars can’t be choosers. 

Derek signed again, and wrapped his jacket a little tighter around himself. He began to drift off again, he was always tired now, and hoped Laura would be home soon.   
______

Laura jogged over to the sand dunes where the truck was parked, trying not to run to unnaturally fast despite the empty beach. It wouldn’t do to draw attention. The truck wasn’t well hidden. The police knew it was here, a deputy had flat out told her that last night. They just didn’t care enough to do anything about it. 

She felt restless, her skin too tight and she wanted to shift and run across the sand. The moon was still hanging in edge the sky, not yet chased off by the faint rays of light creasing over the horizon.

It was a full moon tonight and it made it harder to ignore the call. She wanted to howl, to bring her pack back in to her. It was the new instinct of an alpha and she was still getting used to it. 

She could howl all she wanted, no one was coming back to her. No one except the boy sleeping in the truck.

Part of her agitation was her job, she knew it. After her three day probation period ended last night, she was officially a phone sex operator, much to her shame and disgust. Her mother would die if she knew what her daughter was doing. But, she and Derek needed money and they were hiring and they paid cash nightly. The past three nights she had made enough to fill up the truck with gas and feed both her and Derek. She almost had enough for a down payment on a shitty apartment so they could stay for a bit without freezing to death.

She hated this town. It had no morals. One of the strip clubs almost hired Derek before she could pull him the hell out of there even though the kid was barely seventeen. A phone sex line was practically nothing compared to what he almost got sucked into. It was disgusting and this town would eat them both up if they weren’t careful. It would kill her little brother if she didn’t protect him. 

Poor Derek.

What Kate had done was unthinkable. The way she had used her kid brother had twisted something in Derek, had broken him down. His eyes were haunted and he clung to her like a lifeline, to the point where strangers on the street gave them odd looks and whispered behind their hands. 

Laura didn’t know how to fix this. She was never meant to be the alpha. It was supposed to be their older brother, after their mother. He had the training, not her. She was hopelessly out of her depth. Derek needed help. He needed an actual alpha, not some teenager playing at it.

Derek was broken, his wolf was nearly dead. Derek couldn’t shift anymore, not even a little, not even on the full moon. He wasn’t healing right either, and lately Laura had noticed he was running much colder than a wolf should. He was dangerously close to human and far too helpless to leave in the truck every night. But she had no choice.

“Morning Der,” she said softly, as she climbed into the truck. Derek didn’t stir. Laura signed. Either he was too worn out to hear her come in or his hearing was going as well.

She shook him awake, holding out a warm coffee and a pastry she had picked up when she got off work. 

“Thanks”. Her brother’s voice was hoarse and brittle as ice. She wondered if he was getting sick, if he could get sick. 

Laura turned on the truck and turned the heat up full blast, pointing all the vents at him.

“Laura, don’t. We can’t afford it” 

Laura grinned and messed his hair, getting a grouchy snarl out of the teen. 

“Yes we can. I’m officially employed. Tomorrow we are going to sleep in a real bed.”

Derek’s eyebrows rose. “Is that safe?”

It wasn’t. Not really. They had to assume the hunters were still after them. Laura had smelled their scent as recently as a city in Ohio that they had almost settled down in. They had just signed a lease when Laura had smelled wolfsbane and gunpowder and pulled Derek right the hell out of that state.

But, they had to do something, settle somewhere. It had been quiet since then and Laura was fairly certain they had lost their stalkers. Besides, they couldn’t live in the truck forever. Derek deserved to be a regular kid. Laura deserved to have a normal life. They both needed to finish school to have hobbies and make friends.

They were careful. They had left their names behinds them; they didn’t use their old credit cards or bank accounts. When people asked where they were from, they lied and said Oregon. Well Laura did. Derek just glared and crossed his arm. 

They did their best to be human. They didn’t run on full moons. Laura tried not to growl and scolded Derek when his eyes flashed when strangers asked where his parents were. 

They would be fine here. 

They ate in silence. Well Laura did. She was starved and she scarfed down two donuts. Derek picked at his pastry and continued to look worryingly pale as he shivered despite the heater blowing at full blast.

“Derek” Laura said finally after it was clear he wasn’t going to eat. “I’m worried about you.”

His jaw clenched. “Well don’t.”

“Do you not want to stay here? It’s a safe town, we could be safe here.”

“It’s a terrible town.”

He wasn’t wrong. It was an awful town full of morally corrupt people who made a living off of taking advantage of others and she was about to be one of them.

But, the beach was pretty at least. And there was a small woods nearby. When things settled down, they could go out there and run free in the moonlight. It wouldn’t be too bad to stay here.

It started to snow. Big flakes drifted down and Laura nose twitched as the clean smell of it drifted into the cab of the truck and began to overwhelm the constant stench of sweat and fear that was worn into the very fabric of the seats. It smelled like running free through the woods and Laura felt herself relax just a little. 

She scooted across the bench seat and wrapped her brother up in her arms. She expected Derek to push away but instead he nuzzled up to her. They sat watching it snow. The snow looked magical as it transformed the beach into another world. A world of whispers and gentleness. 

The snow wouldn’t last. Winter had just begun and it wasn’t really cold enough. But, it was pretty while it lasted. 

“I don’t want the only place that I belong to be a town like this. A town full of monsters.” Derek said like his heart was breaking into pieces. 

Laura smelt salt and knew without looking that her brother was crying. It broke her heart and hurt her soul. She didn’t know how to fix this- how to fix him. She wanted her mother and a sob made its way out of her chest.

“Derek” Laura whispered between quiet sobs that shook them both. “You were never a monster.”

They sat there for a while, crying gently and watching the snow. The ground was nearly covered when Laura finally stopped and made a decision.

“I don’t want to stay here either.” she said, and Derek scooted far enough away to give her an incredulous look. 

“I don’t. I hate my job already and I just started. But its decent money and we need the cash. So, here is the plan. We hunker down, we stay the winter here and save up as much money as we can. Then, the second the snow melts, we head down the coast to some warm little town that is filled with kind people who will ask us prying questions and make us welcome-to-town-brownies. Deal?”

Derek stared at her, brows furrowed and lips tight. Laura wasn’t sure if he had unhappy or just thinking. She couldn’t read him anymore, and she hated that. She used to always know what he was thinking. 

“Deal.” he finally said with a small grin. 

Laura wrapped him up in her arms again, this time squeezing him until he squealed and whined for her to let go.   
_____  
The snow muffled everything, scents, sounds, and even light while it was still falling heavily. 

It was perfect for the young hunter who staked his prey, desperate and hungry for a kill, for a chance to prove himself. He had once been a soldier, a very impressive soldier, one who fought for his country above all. Kate had shown him the truth-that his country was close to being overrun by monsters. She had shown him everything, used him to get close to the Hale family, and then she had left him alone. 

He didn’t understand. Kate had said that once the wolves were gone, their mission would be over and they could be together. 

He had thought it was because they missed a few. He had killed the burnt one. Put it out of its misery, more like it. The freak hadn’t even fought back as he pressed the pillow over its nose. 

Then the two dogs escaped town and Kate was gone too. 

This would get her attention; bring her back to him, making the kill she couldn’t, taking down the last of the Hale pack. He had been following them since California. They hadn’t made it easy. It took most of his contacts, both private and military, to track them. He had almost lost them around Ohio, but then the bitch had run a red light and had to pay a fine. After that, it was almost too easy.

The dogs in the truck hadn’t noticed anything was wrong yet. They were too busy holding each other, like the incestuous fuckers they were. What else could you expect from animals.

He set up his rifle yards away. He knew they could smell and hear disgustingly far away, so far he wasn’t complete sure he could make the shot, but he was going to try.

He signed, calming his frantic pulse. This was it. The Hale pack would be gone and Kate would come back. This was it. 

He took aim for the bitch’s head. She was the alpha. If he could take her out from a distance, the other one would be too distraught to fight and he could take it down without any trouble. 

He took a deep breath and pulled the trigger.  
_____  
Laura heard the distinctive click of a bullet sliding into place the moment before the deafening bang that was most certainly a rifle firing. She gripped Derek tighter to her and threw them both down onto the floor boards only moments before the back window shattered, raining glass down on both wolves.

“Hunters” she cried unnecessarily as two more shots followed behind in quick succession. 

“What do we do?” Derek yelled, “Laura, what do we do?” Her baby brother’s eyes were wide and a stray piece of glass must have caught his face. His check was bleeding, bleeding but not healing. 

Laura had never been shot at before and she couldn’t think. Hunters were here, hunters had found them, and knew knows how many there were. She didn’t know what to do. Someone needed to tell her what to do. 

Laura wanted her mother like never before. She wanted her come and save them, like her mother always had for smaller insignificant reasons Laura’s whole life. 

Derek’s eyes were human and scared as they looked at her, begging her to fix this. Another shot came, from the north this time, and shattered the driver side window. She prayed that someone would hear the shots and screams and come help, come save them. But, she knew better. Humans never helped them.

Laura shifted into her beta form, eyes flashing alpha red, in spite of herself. She knew that if anyone did come and saw her, they were more likely to attach than help, but the wolf demanded to be in control with her life at stake. With her pack at stake. 

Laura roared her challenge huddled on the floor as she covered Derek’s ears in an attempt to save his far too human hearing. No more shots came. 

“Laura, I don’t want you to die. Laura, please, don’t die!” Derek was frantic struggling against her grip. “Let me go. I’ll lead them away. I’m faster than you.”

He was. Laura was stronger, even before she was the alpha, but Derek had always been faster, faster than anyone else in the pack. It was a source of pride for the young man during the time when all his siblings seemed stronger or smarter or better. But that was before grief started sucking away his abilities one by one. Now, she doubled he was any faster than a human. 

And there was no way in hell her brother was going to be bait to save her own skin. They were a pack and they were in this together. 

Laura’s mind was racing. If they had to fight hand to hand, they would lose for sure. Peter, the left hand, hadn’t had time to teach either of them anymore than the most basic fight training before he died. Hunters had silver and wolfsbane and knew how to their every strength against them. Still, she would rather they go out fighting than slaughtered like dogs while lying in the dirty floorboard of a shitty truck.

But no other shots had been fired and no heartbeats were stalking closer to the truck. Maybe there weren’t too many hunters. They were faster than humans. Maybe they both could make a run for it. 

“Derek stop it” she said as she tried to listen for any movement outside the truck but she couldn’t hear anything over Derek’s hysterical thrashing and pleas to let him go.

“Derek stop.” she commanded, this time using her alpha voice. He immediately stilled in her arms. She was pleased to see his eyes flare blue as the alpha command took hold. There was still a bit of wolf left in him after all. Laura closed her eyes and listened. 

A long moment passed, wound tight as a thread, before she was able make out the unsteady heartbeat of a nervous hunter. One heartbeat, one shooter, that was moving slowly closer, his footsteps muffled by the snow. 

Fight or flight. It was human instinct, yes, but for the wolf it was an almost overpowering need to act. The hunter was getting closer. She needed to make a decision. 

She kicked the passenger side door open, nearly taking it off its hinges. She shoved Derek out and jumped out behind him. He fell in a clumsy heap and she had to pull him to his feet. 

"Run!” She grabbed her brother’s hand and pulled him through the snow covered sand. They ran, their feet refusing to move properly, each footfall grabbed by the sand . The snow that was still falling all around them muffled the world. The quiet and the slowness-it was like being trapped in a nightmare. Their heavy breathes were far too loud in her ears and the waves crashing on the ocean were too soft. Through it all, the unsteady heartbeat of the hunter followed them, banging out a eulogy. 

Derek was too slow. He kept stumbling and Laura had to pull him up time after time. He was far too slow, no faster than a human teen, and the hunter was gaining.

A shot flew far too close, scratching a wound deep in her side. She snarled and let go of Derek as her hand instinctively went to her side but kept moving. It burned and dripped blood but there was no wolfsbane in it and the wound was already healing. 

They could make it. They would be on the outskirts of town soon, and then the surely someone would help the two kids being chased by a manic. 

Another shot came, hitting her in the meat of her thigh and splattering the white snow with red. She howled in pain and clutched at the nasty hole, but kept limping forward. They could still make it. 

Derek looked at her in horror when he saw the blood flowing through her fingers. He slowed down, then stopped and turned to face the hunter, who had thrown down his rifle and pulled out a pistol as he got ever closer. 

“Keep going.” she demanded, now a few feet ahead. “Derek, come on.”

Derek’s face was determined when he turned back towards her. 

“I won’t be the last Hale standing.”

Laura’s heart dropped to her stomach. 

Derek always hated being left behind of being left alone. Always had. He wasn’t the youngest, but he was the most desperate to be prove himself, always tagging along with her and their older siblings and cousins even when they mocked him and told him to go home. 

It made sense now; his plea that she couldn’t die and his attempt to be the bait. Her brother wasn’t afraid of dying. They had both died with the rest of their family, they knew exactly how it felt. He was alright with dying. He was afraid of being the only one left. 

The hunter was just feet away and still gaining. “Derek don’t you dare.”

He grinned coldly, a twisted thing that looked more like a grimace, and launch himself at the hunter, un-shifted, completely human. The hunter was surprised and didn’t manage to get of a shot before the teen hit him and they both fell into the snow.

Laura roared. She stumbled toward the pair as best she could, her leg stubbornly refusing to move and dragging in the sand. Something, some bone, in it must have shattered but it didn’t hurt.

She planned to rip her brother off the top of the man and drag him the hell away from his suicide attempt, but the hunter flipped Derek before she could get there, pinning him and bringing up his pistol square to Derek’s chest. Derek was desperately trying to stop from shooting his gun, eyes wide and arms shaking.

This couldn’t be happening. Not again. 

Derek was desperate to save Laura, to save his pack, but the hunter was bigger and stronger and he was going to win and Derek was struggling to keep the man’s fingers from the trigger. 

The hunter always wins.

Derek reeked of fear. It was all Laura could smell as she forced her mangled leg to move, damn it. It infuriated her and terrified her in equal measure. She needed to be faster. She needed to get to him. Now.

She didn’t’ hear the shot at first. It was muffled by the snow and the proximity of the gun to her baby brother’s chest.

Instead she saw her brother face twist itself in complete surprise. She saw his arms go limp and fall to the ground, no longer struggling. 

The air was wrenched out of her lungs as Derek let out a small cry and the metal smell of blood filled her nose. 

Then she heard the shot, after the damage was already done. 

Laura ripped the hunter off her brother with a snarl that echoed across the water. She threw him as far from them as she could, hoping he would break a few bones when he landed. His spine if she was lucky. He hit the ground with a sick thud, and didn’t move. 

Derek lay flat on his back trembling in the snow. Blood leaked out of the gaping wound on his stomach and stained the snow a brilliant crimson. 

“Derek ” Laura breathed, falling to her knees beside him. She pressed her hands hard against the wound, making him whine in pain. 

Laura wanted to comfort him, but there just wasn’t time to be gentle. “I need you to shift for me. It will force your healing to kick in.”

Derek looked so damn young, chin trembling and hair wet with sweat and snow. In that moment her looked so much like the pup that used to come into her room when he had bad dreams, like the kid who had been forced kill his first love, like the teen who had everything ripped from him by a molester and by flames.

“I can’t Laura, I can’t.”

His heartbeat didn’t stutter in a lie. He couldn’t. He really couldn’t. She thought about carrying him to town, but at the rate he was bleeding out, he would never make it. 

“Yes you can. There’s no wolfsbane in the bullet. You have too.” 

Derek wasn’t listening anymore. His eyes began to dull. His naturally tan face paled and Laura could hear his heart begin to stutter as it began to lose its battle to keep pumping.

Laura begged. “Please Derek, don’t do this. Don’t leave me here alone. Please baby, I don’t want to be alone. Please.” Tears streamed down her face and she couldn’t catch her breathe. 

“I need you. I need you with me.”

Derek’s heavy breathes turned into wheezes and his lips were blue. She could feel the last remaining pack bond failing. Her heart broke, but she wasn’t surprised. Begging never worked with her brother and it didn’t now.

She had an idea. It was repulsive and cruel, but if it worked, it would be worth it. 

Laura pulled him off the ground and to her chest. She put her lips right next to his ear and whispered “I swear to the moon that if you leave me here alone, I’ll die too. I can’t do this without you. Do you want another death on your hands?”

A shutter went through Derek, and she knew he heard. “My death will be your fault Derek. You’ll kill me.”

His back arched and his dull eyes flickered a pale blue before fading out. 

“Shift. Derek be a wolf and not a fuck-up and shift.”

He whined again in her arms but still bled.

“Shift right now you murder!”

With a howl, Derek’s fangs dropped and his claws popped out. His face grew hairy as he continued to snarl. New skin covered the wound almost instantly and Laura felt weak with relief. 

“Thank you” she said and tried to draw him in for a much needed hug. 

Derek’s vocalizations stopped abruptly as he hung limp in her arms, his arms hanging loosely, stubbornly refusing to wrap around his sister. Laura pulled back and cradled his shifted face in her hands. “Thank you” she repeated. 

Derek’s eyes faded from blue and the facial hair disappeared slowly but even in the cold of the ever falling snow, Laura could tell that his body temperature was running back at what a wolf’s should be. He was going to live.  
______

They gathered up the dead hunter and took his wallet and weapons. They filled his pockets with rocks then tossed the body in the ocean. Laura handed the wallet for Derek to look through while she jogged into the sand dunes to bury the weapons.

Derek refused to look at his ID. He didn’t want to know his name, or where he lived, or if he had family that was waiting on him to come home. He took the cash out and handed everything else to Laura. 

Laura wouldn’t stop talking as she pulled Derek back towards the truck. “We’re going to have to get far away from here. Hopefully no one will notice the hunter is missing for a long time, but we can’t count on that. The body could wash up anytime. It’s not safe. We probably need new identities again. We’ll get our stuff from the truck and leave it. We’ll go south, like we planned, any way we can. That our best bet.”

Laura’s hair was a mess and her shirt was splattered with Derek’s blood. She looked wild, eyes darting all along the beach like she was waiting for another attack, even though they would have been able to hear if anyone else was here by now. Her talons kept popping out and cutting Derek’s hand as she pulled him along, his bright blood dotting the snow behind them like poppies. 

Derek didn’t care. He was numb. Everything he had been afraid of was true. Despite what she had claimed, Laura blamed him for their family’s deaths. And she was right. It was his fault. It was all his fault. He was a murder.

He would have to live with that. Because, he couldn’t leave her, not now, not ever. An alpha without a pack to anchor it would go crazy in a matter of days. And that would be Derek’s fault too and he couldn’t allowed that. 

“Derek, are you alright?” Laura was looking at him strangely. She had let go of his hand, and he realized they were both staring at his palm full of blood.

No. 

“Yes” Derek said out loud this time and he wiped his hand on his jeans. 

“Then get your stuff. There’s a bus to Atlanta later this afternoon and we need to be on it” Laura was throwing her few things in her backpack. “And change your clothes. You look like you killed someone.”

Derek flinched at her words, but obeyed. He would always obey his alpha now.

Laura had just finished cleaning the glove box of the registration when Derek finally spoke up.

“We shouldn’t go down south.” 

“Why not?” Laura had changed clothes too and the frantic look on her face had calmed into the shrewd confident look Derek was accustomed to. 

Because I wanted too. And everything I ever want to do hurts someone I love. 

“The city would be safer. We could blend in more. It’s easier to be no one in a city of millions than in a small town on the coast.”

Laura looked at over the ocean, thinking for longer than Derek thought was really necessary before agreeing. 

“Let’s go.” Laura flashed her brother a small smile, before holding out her hand. 

Derek didn’t take it and Laura didn’t insist. She pulled up her hood against the ever falling snow as they headed out, yet again, into the unknown, together but further apart than they had ever been.


End file.
